


Sharing the Joy Around

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [121]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Brothers being assholes, Family, Family Feels, Gen, Humor, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:27:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26647489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: Neyo's very special gift-giving technique strikes a new target
Series: Soft Wars [121]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 22
Kudos: 314
Collections: Best Fics





	Sharing the Joy Around

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Keeps on Giving](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26115226) by [Project0506](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506). 
  * Inspired by [Friendship Is (Space) Magic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25744600) by [Project0506](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506). 



“The kriff is this?”

There was once, 6 thinks, where that face was the easiest thing in the galaxy to read. Every single thought and emotion would flash skitter-quick through those eyes and mischief never failed to curl around that mouth. Now both those faces muster guarded, and what a man will see is almost guaranteed to be the slight that hides the truth.

One of those is 6’s fault, the other was his choice.

“It’s a lamp,” the man, the menace titters though 6 can smell his nuisance is more rehearsed than impulsive.

“Like kriff that’s a lamp.”

It isn’t a lamp.

It looks nothing less than what’s left of a massacre of good taste, after classy was shot at dawn.

It looks like something a bantha shat out, if the bantha was in need of immediate medical attention.

“It’s a lamp!” he insists, and flicks up past 6’s shoulder to tap some arcane pattern of the swirled polyps. The light starts about waist high and spreads down to just about ankles and up to just about chin, and the whole damn thing glows.

It doesn’t help. Now it just looks like a _bright_ man-sized shit.

“They’re are the new thing now, everyone’s getting em. Imported single-block too, straight from Crait. Carved it myself, special just for you. Inspired by all my thoughts of you.”

This brat.

“The salt sublimates, supposed to be good for all kinds of issues. Constipation. Irritability. Senescence.”

This fucking brat.

“It’s shit.”

“That’s hurtful.”

“It’s shit and you know it’s shit.” He rocks giddily ball-of-foot to heel and back. His grin never wavers. This little fucking brat.

6 reaches and for a single moment there’s a crack in that mask and 6 doesn’t know which way he’ll run. Doesn’t know if he would chase him, if it came to that. It doesn’t. Neyo slips into his hand an unfamiliar wraith, cool and nearly insubstantial.

He feels so much smaller now, than before.

He comes and he presses, forehead to forehead, ungentle in haste and the clack like a missing piece slotting back into place.

“You made this for me?” 6 says and his words need so little to bridge their distance. There was once, a life ago, when 6 had screamed and screamed and couldn’t reach.

“By hand,” Neyo claims and 6 thinks he might be lying. Kicks at his instep and the kid snickers. His eyes stay shut. His lashes are finer than Fox’s, a little thinner a little shorter. 6 had never had the chance to notice. “With a little help from a plasma cutter,” Neyo admits and his cheeks bunch with his grin. “Traditional Crait style.”

“Crait is uninhabited, you karking dumpster-scavenging liar.”

Neyo giggles and somehow, _somehow_ it’s still exactly the same. It’s still that same thing Fox likes to do, to imitate the aggravating, unsettling laugh 6 perfected against his own brothers. It grates like flimsifoil to the molars. It is the best thing 6 has heard in years.

“That’s _Fox_ idiot, I’ve never eaten _anything_ out of a recycler.”

“Whichever pain in my shebs you are.”

Laughter shakes Neyo’s shoulders. This close he can’t hide the desperation in it.

6 pulls away and Neyo resists with the urgency of a drowning man and won’t subside until it’s clear 6 will go no further than to press lips to his forehead, to press his forehead to his chest.

“Whichever one you are,” 6 murmurs and he has his last in his hold once more. “You should find a different hobby. You are shit at this one.”

“Everyone’s a karking critic,” 6’s pest grumbles. Arms snake around 6’s waist, unsure and unpracticed. They linger light, tighten once. They loosen, awkward. 6 grips and doesn’t. Slowly, Neyo grips back.

“I’m spacing this.”

“We’re ground side, forgetting where you are already? Mind’s the first thing to go. I hear salt helps with that.”

“Brat.”

6 isn’t used to being ground side, isn’t used to gravity that stays all in one place instead of shuddering with an engine. Isn’t sure he likes it. Would never have forgiven himself if he’d gone back out before Neyo could reach whatever place it was that hauled his ass up this mountain with several hundred pounds of bright red salt rock.

Would never have forgiven that damn Alor’ika for letting him go. ‘Detailed to the Marines’ his left cheek; 17’s brats are as annoyingly intuitive as he is and twice as aggravatingly circumspect. Wouldn’t have killed the damn brat to say ‘stay, your kid’s gonna need you in a couple months’. Asshole.

“I will reserve a Lartie, make a contingent of Marines ruck up this rock and haul _that_ rock up into orbit around First-moon and _space it_. Special, just for you.”

“You’re a fucking asshole,” Neyo giggles wetly.

“Sure, but don’t you go thinking you got any of this from me. If anything I sprouted this karking shell in self-defense.” 6 waits for a protest but there isn’t one. He taps a shoulder roughly. “And watch your karking language.”

6 will be the worst sort of hypocrite for the rest of his natural life if he can just keep sparking that rusty, creaky laugh.

It takes a while to peter out but 6 wavered once and never again; his feet will root as long as he needs. Neyo’s head rests heavy on his shoulder. Grounding. For the first time since 6’s boots touched rock, his blood isn’t screaming for retreat.

“It’s obnoxious, yeah?”

It’s an assault on the optic nerve with a blunt object. 6 musters up the sternest, most displeased look he can. It isn’t very good, he knows even without the quirk of understanding at the edge of Neyo’s mouth.

“It’s a five and a half foot maroon cowpat.”

“It’s a health-promoting salt lamp.”

“It’s a five and a half foot cowpat that you stuck a lamp inside.”

“Does that mean you don’t want it?”

Some things change, others don’t. Some things change enough to come back round to fit again and there was some god or Force banthashit with a sense of humor looking out for this one, incredible thing. Kept it safe, hidden deep where greedy claws couldn’t carve it out of Neyo’s chest in their quest to steal everything that made him 6’s.

(He remembers the moment he thought it all lost. He remembers holding one of 17’s, Bly he thinks it was, sobbing into his chest. He remembers Neyo limping from a spar, arm shattered wrist to collarbone, face a blank, statue-impassive. He remembers lying to Bly, telling him yes Neyo still felt things, telling him that the match was to show Neyo what he needed to work on, to make sure he couldn’t be hurt like that again. He remembers never telling the kid that his empathy saved him, and Neyo’s lack doomed him; that’s Priest’s eyes rolled off his tears in disgust and followed Neyo’s blankness with satisfaction. He remembers watching that face limp away and finding nothing of himself in it, nothing at all.

He’d forgotten, how good his boys had become at showing people exactly what they expect to see.)

“If I space this garbage,” 6 murmurs secret to Neyo’s hair, “who wins?”

They’d carved out everything that made him human, or they’d tried. It would figure, they never would have thought to go after the bits that made him one of 6’s assholes. Neyo grins and it’s Gree’s glee, Colt’s conniving, Fox’s fiendishness. 6’s semi-savage shitheads.

“Tell Fox it disgusts you but you just can’t make yourself get rid of a present from me. Lay on the emotion thick, ramp up the gag factor. Think ‘Vom’. Colt is already on to me and Gree suspects but they’re still being polite.”

“I’m not keeping this shit in my house. You’re not _that_ cute.”

Neyo makes his eyes huge and liquid but can’t quite cover the slip of devilish incisors in his smile. “I’m hurt, 6. Wounded.”

Does he know, 6 wonders, that his arms still clutch 6’s waist? 6 doesn’t mind, but he can’t help the little guilt that whispers of whether there’s truth hiding under that mock. He doesn’t know, and he can’t ask.

“I’m calling Marines,” 6 says instead, because he’s a jackass too. “Have them haul it to the rec center.”

“By your desk,” murmurs Neyo because of course he knows where that is. They’ve both been carefully stepping around each other for months, footing unsure.

“By my desk,” 6 allows, “but further out. Make sure everyone can see it.”

“Bacara will despise it.”

6 can’t speak to that. The Marine is one of those ones that disquiet him: too even-keeled, always knowing where his boots are planted. Too good and letting things slide around him. Inhumanly good, because Davin was just as skilled as Priest at cutting away what he didn’t want.

But then, Priest didn’t get everything. Maybe Davin didn’t either.

Neyo’s rising glee could have merit, he’d be the one to know. And really, anyone with a soul would despise this. “It’ll take him forever to admit it. You’re _brilliant_.”

“Thanks, I have my moments.”

They stand in each other’s space and 6 does not let go.

“I thought you wouldn’t want to keep it, you know. You never did appreciate red enough.”

6 is an Alpha, bred and trained. He knows an oncoming disaster when he sees one.

“Look you little-”

“So I brought you a table lamp too.”

And he did: blue and foot high, a glowing dewback turd to light up 6’s life.

“Carved it myself-”

“I’m going to _throw you off this mountain_!”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [See Me In Shadow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28187238) by [RogueLadyVader (LaylaYuy)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaylaYuy/pseuds/RogueLadyVader)




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